


love me tender, love me long

by giucorreias



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Post-Canon, Softness, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-24 22:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22025365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giucorreias/pseuds/giucorreias
Summary: Thorin is clumsy here like he is nowhere else.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Comments: 2
Kudos: 125





	love me tender, love me long

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwistedRomance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwistedRomance/gifts).



> This is a gift for my beautiful friend who asked for introspective bagginshield. I did my best!! I hope you like it.

The world is a dangerous place, Thorin knows. It is harsh and unforgiving, equal parts monsters and darkness. It hasn’t made him a good person, nor a kind one. He holds the longest grudges and is, _has been_ , capable of many terrible things. He’s fought wars and killed people. He’s been cursed. Hell, he even hurt the one that is his most precious of _all_.

He knows he doesn’t deserve this, and, yet, he can’t help but take it — He’s always been a greedy creature by nature.

“Thorin.” Bilbo cups his hands and the touch is feathery, light. Bilbo’s skin is soft and warm against Thorin’s rough, scarred skin. Thorin blinks at him, once, twice, and then offers him a helpless half-smile. In response, Bilbo lowers Thorin’s hands slowly until it touches the wet, cold dirt, fragile where metal is unforgivingly hard.

Bilbo takes off his hands, and Thorin lets go of the seed he had been holding. He doesn’t know exactly what it is that they’re planting, gets confused with the amount of different names and instructions, hasn’t got any experience with this which is not smithing, not fighting, not ruling, not surviving.

It’s tranquil, though, quiet and calming (and Bilbo is here).

“Just a little water for now,” he says. “We don’t want to drown the seed. It’s used to a much harsher environment than my little garden.” Bilbo taps the dirt once, twice, then gives Thorin another seed. “You do it, now.”

[  
  
](https://islenthatur.wordpress.com/welcome/)

There is nothing little about the garden, Thorin had made sure of that. It is a wide chamber, up in the mountain where there is sun, built to keep warmth and sustain life. It is very different from anywhere else in the mountain, because it is a place that is essentially Bilbo. There isn’t anything gold or silver, nothing shiny. There is no grandeur. No huge statues built to last, with stony, squared faces that look proud and stout.

It is green. Green and colorful, with flowers and fruit. There are birds, surprisingly, tiny little things that Bilbo pretends to be angry about — that he complains constantly they eat what they shouldn’t — but that he croons to, sweetly, softly, when no one else is looking. There is a rabbit, a white little thing that Kili found on a hunt and brought back because his face reminded him of Thorin (and, indeed, there are dark splotches of fur on its face that strike a resemblance to Thorin’s eyebrows, but that he’ll deny to his last breath).

He built it as a gift. Before he knew whether Bilbo would stay, just because he hoped he would. Built it to distract himself from the guilt he still, up to this day, feels around his heart, every time he remembers his actions on that day. Built it because he can do nothing else but give Bilbo anything he thinks might make him happy, because he has suffered enough and there is nothing he loves more than seeing the way his eyes brighten when he smiles.

[  
  
](https://islenthatur.wordpress.com/welcome/)

Thorin is clumsy here like he is nowhere else. He understands metal instinctively, knows the shapes it will take even before he starts working on it. The sound of the hammer is as known to him as the palms of his own hands, the heat of the fire is a familiar comfort. He has spent years of his life working on a forge, and though not the profession fit for his position, it was honest work.

Likewise, he knows his way around the battlefield, understands how enemies will move and what next action he should take to defeat them; knows what it is to feel desperately outnumbered but still manage to be victorious — he feels reassured when there is a sword on his hand, a shield on the other, because fighting is easy and straightforward. You win or you lose. You live or you die. 

He knows nothing about gardening.

For Bilbo, he is willing to learn.

  
  


“You’ve been silent, today.” Bilbo tells him after they’re done, sitting cross-legged side by side with their backs against the bark of a tree. Bilbo is expertly peeling an apple, and Thorin can’t help but watch the movement of his hands. “I don’t think I’ve heard you say a word.”

Thorin shrugs. He looks up to face his husband, and smiles at the sight of him. His cheeks are flushed, his hair is in disarray under the straw hat — though his marriage braid is carefully tucked behind one ear — and there is a smudge of dirt on his left cheek. “I was thinking,” is all he answers, because he doesn’t know how to explain the way he feels with words in a way that makes sense.

“Oh?” Bilbo finishes peeling his apple, discards the peel, then cuts a piece of the fruit, offers it to Thorin. “What about?”

“You,” Thorin sighs. Bilbo raises his eyebrows, and carefully lowers the apple and the knife to his lap.

“Yeah?” His attention is picked, and he’s looking at Thorin with big, unreadable eyes.

Thorin nods. “I love you,” he says, because that is what it is, that is what he feels, in a way. Love seems like too small a word, but he doesn’t know any others. “ _Âzyungel_ . _Menu tessu._ ”

Bilbo takes up the knife again, looks down to go back to his apple. “I love you too,” he says, after a moment. “ _Men lananubukhs menu_.” His pronunciation is butchered because he doesn’t quite get the vowels right, but when he looks up again his eyes are bright.

That’s all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> I got these Khuzdul sentences from the internet, and specifically [this post](https://islenthatur.wordpress.com/welcome/). I do not know anything about Khuzdul syntax and lexic, so if there's anything wrong let me know!


End file.
